The Chittagong Hill Tracts occupy the southeastern corner of Bangladesh, a mountainous region bordering India and Myanmar that has been home to the Jumma people -- a collective term for the region's indigenous communities including the Chakma, Marma, and Tripuri -- for centuries. After Bangladesh's independence in 1971, a government settlement program moved hundreds of thousands of Bengali plainsmen into the hill tracts, altering the region's demographics and generating tensions over land, resources, and political representation. The Shanti Bahini, an armed group drawn from indigenous communities, waged a guerrilla insurgency against the Bangladeshi military. Logang village, located in Khagrachari District along the border with India, sat in the middle of this contested landscape -- home to Jumma families who were neither combatants nor settlers, but whose presence on disputed land made them targets.

The government's account begins with a provocation: Shanti Bahini guerrillas attacked five Bangladeshis with dao knives in Logang village, injuring all of them and killing Kabir Ahmed Hossein, who died from a throat wound. What followed was not a proportional response. Bengali settlers, border guards, and army personnel converged on the Jumma population of the village and its surrounding cluster. Armed with axes, hatchets, and guns, they attacked residents and set fire to their homes. Survivors described a coordinated assault -- not a spontaneous riot but an organized campaign of destruction. By the time it ended, the village was ash. Estimates of the dead range from the government's figure of twelve to survivor accounts exceeding four hundred. The army removed the bodies, making an independent count impossible.

More than 2,000 Jumma villagers fled east into Tripura state in northeastern India, joining a growing population of refugees from the Hill Tracts conflict. Over 545 houses were destroyed according to survivor interviews; the official report acknowledged 550 Jumma dwellings burned, one of the few points on which official and independent accounts roughly converge. Many of the displaced could not return to their villages until January 1997, nearly five years after the attack. For those years, they lived in limbo -- people whose homes had been erased and whose government had published a report that reduced their losses to a footnote.

The Bangladeshi government launched an official investigation led by retired Justice Sultan Hossain Khan. A report was submitted to the Home Ministry on 20 August 1992, four months after the massacre. It was never published in Bengali for the Bangladeshi public. Instead, a 20-page English-language version appeared in October 1992, later expanded to 25 pages with Justice Khan's signature, under the title "Logang Disturbances Enquiry Commission." The document acknowledged 12 Jumma killed, 13 injured, and 2 missing, along with 550 homes destroyed. The language itself -- "disturbances" rather than "massacre" -- signaled the government's framing. No prosecutions followed. No compensation was distributed. The investigation existed as a document, not as justice.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord of 1997 brought a formal end to the insurgency and created a regional council with elected indigenous members who must be consulted by the central government on matters concerning the hill tracts. The accord has drawn criticism from all sides: Bengali nationalists argue it cedes sovereignty, while indigenous advocates note that demands for full autonomy, demilitarization, and the withdrawal of settlers were never addressed. Internationally, the treaty was seen as a breakthrough in a conflict spanning decades. But for the survivors of Logang, the accord did not include accountability for what happened on 10 April 1992. The village has been rebuilt. The dead remain uncounted by any authority willing to publish the number.